Title: Soil carbon accounting and assumptions for forestry and forest-related land use change

Author: Heath, Linda S.; Smith, James E.

Year: 2000

Publication: In: Joyce, Linda A.; Birdsey, Richard, technical editors. 2000. The impact of climate change on America's forests: a technical document supporting the 2000 USDA Forest Service RPA Assessment. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-59. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 89-101

Abstract: Comprehensive, large-scale carbon accounting systems are needed as nations agree to work toward reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, adopting a standard accounting system is difficult because multiple science and policy uses for such a system help fuel the debate about the nature of an appropriate system. Accounting systems must address all major sources and sinks of GHGs, or more pragmatically, focus on subsets of important sources and sinks and feature transparent, fundamental rules that may be adopted easily by all nations. Here, we review some issues in carbon accounting of a major GHG sink: forest soils, at a national scale. Specifically, we concentrate on how land use change and harvesting affect forest soil carbon, and how those effects may be described clearly in an accounting system that is easy to use.

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